Two Bronx campuses under one family operator, offering free 3-K and Pre-K — and unusually straight about how Montessori the programme actually is.
Leadership is named — see below — but there is no staff page and no teacher or credential is published for either campus. Our rating measures disclosure, not quality.
Riverdale runs three classrooms covering a private twos programme plus DOE-funded 3-K and Pre-K, with a summer programme. Kingsbridge runs 3-K and Pre-K only. Wraparound care runs from 7:30am to 5:30pm at both.
Why one entry for two campuses: both permits are held by the same operator, they share a single website, and the school presents them as one organisation with two locations. ⚠️ A practical note for anyone searching official records: the operator's name is spelled “Jasmin” on the Riverdale permit and “Jasmine” on the Kingsbridge one, and a third address on Grand Avenue circulates in old state filings and a stale listing. Searching either campus by its trading name alone will find nothing.
Its current website says, in its own words, that in all three classrooms “we follow parts of the philosophy of education created by Dr. Maria Montessori”, and elsewhere that the Riverdale programme “combines Creative Curriculum with Montessori”.
That framing is long-standing, and it was volunteered on the record sixteen years ago. In a February 2010 interview with the Riverdale Press — an article actually titled “Living up to Montessori” — the director said she had trained under a certified Montessori instructor and put Montessori at roughly 80% of what she implements. She said the programme could not be called purely Montessori, because that requires mixed-age classrooms, and mixed-age grouping would rule out offering universal Pre-K to a class of four-year-olds. She also gave a cost reason: certifying all teachers would run about $4,000 per classroom.
We think that deserves saying plainly: this is the opposite of the pattern this site usually documents. Most schools we flag have quietly acquired a Montessori credential they cannot support. This one has spent sixteen years telling anyone who asked exactly which parts it does and does not do, and why — including a trade-off it made deliberately in order to offer free public Pre-K. You may still decide it is not the Montessori education you want. But you will not have been misled about it.
Two independent details are consistent with the partial model: a former lead teacher publicly described the curriculum as following New York State Common Core, and a 2015 parent noted the age groups are taught in separate classrooms rather than mixed.
3-K and Pre-K are free at both campuses — these are DOE-funded seats, applied for through the city, not through the school. The only paid programme is the Riverdale twos class, and no rate is published. No parent has stated a figure publicly either. Ask directly.
Jasmine Stivala leads the schools, having acquired Riverdale Montessori in 1997 from founder Benjamin Fox, who opened it in 1984; Kingsbridge followed in 2000 as an extension. The operating company, Jasmin Educational Enterprises Inc., has been registered in the Bronx since 1999.
Below that level, nothing is published: no staff page, no teacher named, no credential listed at either campus. The 2010 interview gives the only public credential information we have — that the director trained under a certified Montessori instructor, and that certifying all teachers was judged too costly.
Staff-side signals, and they are thin but consistent. Two anonymous employee reviews per campus rate job security and advancement at 1.5 out of 5, and pay at 1.5–2.0. A 2019 review from the Kingsbridge campus described enjoying the first year but finding the job stressful afterwards, explicitly because of staff dynamics rather than the children, and suggested moving on after a year. Four reviews is far too few to characterise an employer — we report it because staff churn matters to families and there is nothing else on the record.
Riverdale: 3.7 from 7 Google reviews and 3.0 from 6 on Yelp — both samples too small to carry a rating, and we are not assigning one. But the shape is worth knowing, because it has a clear direction.
The positive reviews are old and the critical ones are recent. Every favourable review is at least two years old, four of them seven to nine years old. A 2024 five-star review praised the staff: “I truly love the attention they pay to the kids. the teachers are all in tune with the needs of the kids and well trained.” The two most recent reviews on the listing, however, are both one-star, from around September and November 2025; one carries no text, the other says only that a three-year-old “had a horrible time at this school.”
Older Yelp criticism from April 2019 is sharper — two reviewers made serious allegations about the director's conduct toward parents, staff and children. We report those as allegations and nothing more. Three of the six Yelp reviews fall inside a thirteen-day window, which is the signature of a single contested episode rather than steady sentiment; nothing corroborates them anywhere else, and nothing rebuts them either. They are now more than seven years old.
Kingsbridge has zero verified parent reviews anywhere — no Google rating, no Yelp listing, nothing on the school directories. ⚠️ If you find a rating for Kingsbridge on an aggregator, be sceptical: at least one site publishes a figure that is identical to Riverdale's Google average and appears to be that campus's score misattributed to its sibling.
An inspection note in the school's favour. Riverdale's health inspections across 2022–23 were all passed with a 0% violation rate against a citywide average of 21.9%. Kingsbridge had one critical violation in September 2022, recorded as corrected, with clean inspections nine days before and two weeks after.
No independent parent chatter found — a clean negative. Nothing on Reddit for either campus or the operator's name; r/Bronx has never carried a post mentioning Montessori at all, and two dozen Bronx threads in the parenting subreddits name no local operator. Nothing in the Riverdale Press, Bronx Times or Norwood News since 2010.
Swept 11 August 2026Nobody has ever publicly complained that it isn't “real” Montessori. Across every parent and staff review we could find, not one mentions Montessori fidelity, materials, work cycles or accreditation. The school made an unforced disclosure about its own partial approach, and its market appears never to have reacted to it either way.
Reviewed 11 August 2026Third-party records for these campuses are unusually error-prone. One childcare directory lists Riverdale at 5720 Mosholu — that is a different daycare across the street. Another gives the school's website as an unrelated Manhattan operator's domain. A third shows Kingsbridge at a long-superseded Jerome Avenue address. Verify anything you read elsewhere.
Checked 11 August 2026Violations heard and decided at the city’s administrative tribunal. We publish these in full, including when there are none.
Summonses are issued to the operator, Jasmin Educational Enterprises, and cover both campuses. One 2025 case includes §47.03(a) — operating without a permit.
For comparison: across all 18,161 DOHMH child-care cases heard at OATH, 63.1% were sustained, 21.3% ended in default and 13.1% were dismissed. Most citations concern records, repairs and paperwork — staff immunisation files, premises upkeep, sink water temperature, background-check timing — rather than incidents involving a child.
Source: NYC Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, case status data, checked 11 August 2026. These are adjudicated outcomes, not inspection allegations. The record gives the rule cited and the result, but never the inspector’s narrative — the charge text always reads “see attached NOV”. Outcomes can change on appeal. Something wrong? Tell us.
Source: NYC Health Department Child Care Connect (live register), checked 22 August 2026; refreshed weekly. Inspection lines are the Department’s own summary results. Pre-adjudicated citation details are not republished here; adjudicated outcomes appear above. Lead results shown with the Department’s protocol status.
Kingsbridge has no public reviews at all, and Riverdale's are sparse and polarised. First-hand experience would be genuinely valuable here.